Stop Singing the “Big Box Store Blues”
Don’t get bummed by the boxes.
If there is one thing that design professionals love to hate, it’s the home improvement center.
Whenever and where ever I speak, I hear designers, floor covering specialists, decorators, retailers and others bellyache about big box stores.
No question that box stores are, well, big. Over 22 million people each week visit Home Depot stores, whose collective annual sales total over $50 billion.
You want to talk big? Home Depot claims to sell enough carpeting in a year to pave a two-lane road from Atlanta to Los Angeles to New York City, and back to Atlanta.
But a survey of consumer buying habits a while back by Springs Window Fashions LP suggests that design professionals need not worry about the Home Depots of the world.
Its poll of more than 3000 consumers found that only about a third of them buy window treatments at home improvement centers.
In contrast, 46 per cent of the buyers shop at outlets offering “expert help with styles and fit,” and/or “quality, variety, and unique types.”
Price is only one of several “market drivers” identified by the report. Among the others: “desire for a ’specific’ look, personalization, a need for expert help, convenience,
and brand.”
The survey concludes that the more than $58 billion retail window treatment market holds outstanding potential for independent professionals.
“Your competition is not the big box,” the survey advises designers, decorators, and retailers. “Your primary customers don’t shop there.”
Big Box stores have avery important place in the home design market. Remember many consumers get their first taste of using a designer by buying a consultation from one of thier local desgn firms.if the expeience is positive they now know how a designer can help them. I’m one of them that they call. I work with them and suggest many items from places like home dedepot, Ikea Target etc for thei first shopping tip. I’ve been doing tis for years and Guess what many of them come back to me several years later when their finacials improve and they move up in their career. They also reccomend me to their more affluent friends as a designer they can trust.They all say, you really helped us when we had small budgets and we liked how you treated us and now we have some money. Guess who got their Job.
I use the catalogues and any other supplier that can give them the look without the price. I’ts one of my biggest market tricks and it works.
Comment by Michael Love — May 3, 2007 @ 9:20 pm